Bioactivity of Cissampelos pareira medicinal plant against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

Tuberculosis is ranked as leading cause of death from a single micro-organism. Studies aimed at identifying alternative drugs for managing tuberculosis need to be considered. Medicinal plants are hoped to fill this gap. Therefore, our study was aimed at answering the question of whether Cissampelos pareira has anti tuberculosis activity. This was addressed using in vitro and chemical tests. We found out that, antituberculous activity was very high with MIC ranging between 50 to 6.25 µg/ml among all fractions. General antibacterial activity was broad spectrum with methanolic fraction yielding the highest activity of 28 mm in S. aureus and the lowest MIC of between 31.25 and 62.5 µg/ml and the fraction was not toxic. The activity could be due to phytochemicals alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, anthraquinones and phenols present in extract fractions. We therefore suggest that methanolic fraction provide a viable candidate for novel safe antimicrobial drugs.